Technical Preview: Montreal ePrix

TECH TALK

Posted on: 28 July, 2017

We head to Montreal for the final race weekend with our season's objectives already in the bag - third place in both the teams’ and the drivers’ championship. Now we aim higher - with just 12 points separating us from the second place teams' championship and two races to go - we now want more.

More podiums - taking our current tally of nine into double digits. Another double podium? Could we become the team with three double podiums in Formula E's third season?

While Montreal is no stranger to motorsport, it will be the city's first Formula E all-electric street racing weekend. Our Chief Engineer and Passioneer - Vinit Patel - talks tech and tactics for the season finale double-header - the #MontrealePrix.

The Montreal ePrix circuit is a traditional street circuit in the downtown epicentre. It will be completely different to our last two events in Berlin and New York where Formula E had a blank canvas to varying degrees to design the track.

The circuit layout is defined by the layout of the city and existing street architecture. Racing around the Maison du Radio Canada means there will be a lot of 90 degree corners with a long, flat-out section on the startfinish straight and a bus-stop style chicane towards the end of the lap.

The width of the road should allow at least three, potentially four cars to run alongside each other, however the corners themselves will be very tight and will filter into the apex.

Because of the nature of streets themselves the surfaces we will see will be varied, which will prove to be challenging. There will be high camber in all of the corners, meaning we will have to change the way we set up the car.

In this part of Montreal there will be some inclination, which will be unusual for Formula E. In some parts of the circuit we will potentially be climbing uphill or going downhill in addition to bumps and other traditional street circuit elements that we haven’t really seen in Tempelhof and New York City.

Our development is continuing along the same lines that led us to victory in Berlin, so we don’t see any reason why we can’t continue momentum not only on the competitive and sporting momentum of Berlin and New York but also the technical, to ensure that we arrive in Montreal with an exceptionally competitive package.